I always imagined that the idea of Forum Battles was not to provide a single person or team with the 'glory' of victory, but rather to provide everyone, contestants and observers, with joy and amusement of the Brikwars variety.

To play loose with the rules in such a way would take someone who knew what they were doing and had the ability to make the right decisions while staying mostly impartial throughout the game. Not saying it can't be done, I would bet my manly knob on quite a few veteran players here that do just that in their own Forum Battles, to good effect. However I would caution that not everyone can play this way without it turning into a ruinous fail of suckdom. I also think trying something like this in anything other than a forum hosted battle would be nothing short of unworkable, unless the players were really pissed or stoned and then only if they could stay awake.